Knowledge is the Foundation of Success

We live in a fast-paced world. With the use of smartphone technology, people can multi-task like never-before. Mobile communication is getting faster, smarter and more efficient. Live phone calls are becoming a thing of the past with nearly two thirds of smartphone users using messaging more than five times a day. People know what they want and expect immediate action, but also like to respond to messages in their own time, when it is most convenient to them.

Google AdWords has been offering users unique ways to connect with products & services for 16 years, and is staying on beat to the ever-changing needs of the consumer. Therefore, they have created Message Extensions. These extensions are click-to-message ads that give users the ability to start a conversation and communicate in the time they see fit.

Want to book a reservation at a local 5-star restaurant? Search the restaurant, click the text message bubble within the ad, and send a text asking about table availability. Because that restaurant is equipped with a phone number that can send and receive text messages, they can easily and quickly reply.

Does this sound like a feature you’d like to try in your AdWords account? It’s a free extension, and it is here (if you don’t see it in your account yet, keep checking as it’s a rolling change from Google)!

Contact JumpFly today to discuss this and the many other useful tools that Google AdWords can offer your business.

Advertisers are accustomed to the way in which Google AdWords attributes conversions to the last ad click a consumer has made before completing his conversion. But what if there were a way to take into account all of a user’s interactions with your ads leading up to that conversion? More than ever, today’s consumers are researching and interacting on different devices before they take that final conversion action. Research shows that while the vast majority of conversion actions take place on desktops, many consumers conduct research on their mobile phones or tablets prior to purchasing. AdWords has now introduced new attribution models that can go beyond last-click measurement. These new models can offer insight into your customer’s actions before that final conversion action and allow you to bid more efficiently. AdWords now offers six different attribution models:

Last Click Attribution (the current default) – Gives all credit for the conversion to the last-clicked keyword. This is most effective for those with the most conservative growth strategies.

First Click Attribution – Gives all the credit for the conversion to the first-clicked keyword. This is the most growth-oriented strategy.

Linear Attribution – Distributes the credit for the conversion equally across all clicks on the path. For a moderate growth strategy.

Time Decay Attribution – Gives more credit to clicks that happened closer in time to the conversion. For a conservative growth strategy.

Position-Based Attribution – Gives 40% of the credit to both the first- and last-clicked keyword, with the remaining 20% spread out across the other clicks on the path. For a growth-oriented strategy.

Data-Driven Attribution* – Gives credit to the clicked keywords based on how imperative they were in the conversion process. This is based on the account’s performance.

*Note: only accounts with 800+ conversions and 20,000 clicks in a 30-day span to qualify to use this type of attribution.

Choosing the right attribution model will help you put the performance of different keywords into the proper perspective. This will give you a truer sense of the value of a keyword and allow you to have more insight when setting bids on that keyword. You may also discover that keywords used earlier in the conversion process have more influence than you realized, which can help you avoid pausing or underbidding on these keywords.

Mobile has long been emphasized and data is increasingly showing the importance of mobile in the conversion process.

2015 proved to be a big year in that mobile has surpassed desktops as the primary device for searches. Mobile has changed consumer behaviors and the use of mobile phones is different than PCs. Data shows that mobile is used heavily in the research and evaluation process while PCs are used to complete transactions. That means bounce rate on desktop is dropping, as is number of pages visited, while conversions are going up. Simply stated, if you do not see conversions attributed to mobile devices, it does not mean mobile has not played a critical role in the conversion process. Looking at device conversions only could cause you to miss the importance of mobile in the decision process.

What steps can you take with mobile to help with conversions?

Have a mobile friendly site. Follow best practices such as having calls-to-action front and center, keeping menus short and sweet, and making sure site search is visible will make for a better mobile experience. You can read all 25 principles of mobile site design based on research done by Google and AnswerLab.

Have a fast site. The average impact of a one-second delay means a 7% reduction in conversion. Pages that load in three and five seconds compared to pages that load in one second converted 22% and 38% less respectively. The bottom line is the speed of your mobile site is important, even more than a slow desktop site, as it directly relates to higher conversions.

As an example, for an ecommerce site that earns $100,000/day, a one second delay in site loading equals $2.5 million in lost revenue for the year. Just one second. For Amazon, having pages load 100ms faster equals 1% more revenue, and their 1% can equal billions of dollars.

If you do not have a mobile strategy in place, you should strongly consider a plan to get you there. A path to converting may start on a mobile phone, jump to a tablet, then over to a PC, back to a phone and finally converting on a PC. The point being that providing a great experience with all devices is important to success and conversions. Do not ignore the importance of your mobile presence even if you are not seeing conversions directly tied to mobile devices.